


A Rare Thing

by sevenofspade



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:09:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of the Warehouse has disappeared on Leena again. Claudia and Steve help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rare Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneworldaway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneworldaway/gifts).



> This is set early in Season 3. I hope you enjoy it!

Once upon a time, Leena thought everyone was like her. People would tell her they were feeling blue or that so-and-so had been red from rage and she would think that they too saw colours spread through auras like ink through water.

It was only when she was ten that realised why no one ever called confusion yellow. She was the only one for whom the colours where real. To everyone else, they were just metaphor.

How she'd hated that word, at first. Metaphor: noun, a lie that is not a lie.

She hated it that people didn't mean grey-brown when talking about the colour of heartache, but then she met Jeannie, who could smell colour in the shape of perfumes. Jeannie was Leena's friend, then Leena's first girlfriend.

Then Jeannie found an Artefact and wasn't anyone's anything anymore.

Leena followed Mrs Frederick because she wanted answers.

She stayed because of the endless wonder, cliché though it may be. She stayed because her problems seemed smaller here and if she was in pain or afraid, there was always someone to listen, even if not all of them were alive or even human.

If there was one Section she loved more than the others, it was the remnants of Warehouse 11.

Or it would be, if it didn't regularly disappear.

It was the Warehouse, these things happened. It was the Warehouse twice and these things were the way they were and made her job interesting.

Ah. There. That green-and-purple aura could only belong to one person in the Warehouse and that person could not leave Warehouse 11. Leena followed the aura into the fold in the Warehouse floor plan that landed her in Warehouse 11.

"Hello Jeannie," Leena said.

"Hi," Jeannie said. "I think we've disappeared again. Sorry about that." Leena wanted to hug her, the way she always did, but Jeannie wasn't corporeal anymore.

"Do you think you could reappear soon? We're going to need Matthias Ringmann’s map to get Pete and Myka to where they're going in time." Leena started walking to where said Artefact is stored.

Jeannie flickered as she shook her head. "Unfortunately not. 

"I really should something about that," Leena said.

"Leena? Who are you talking to?" Leena turned around and there was Claudia, looking at her like she had been speaking to thin air.

Leena supposed that as far as Claudia was concerned, she probably had been. She smiled. "I was talking to Baba Deep Singh’s Khanda."

"Oh." Claudia's face softened. "Is it someone you know? Shit, that was a personal question, wasn't it?"

"A little," Leena said. She smiled to let Claudia know she didn't mean it.

"So what's going on?" Claudia bravely soldiered on through the awkwardness she'd made. She snapped her fingers. "Warehouse 11! Matthias Ringmann’s map is in Warehouse 11 and it's disappeared again. Can I help?"

Jeannie was gone.

Leena shook her head. "I don't think so. Do you know anything about The Tale of Igor’s Campaign?"

"No," Claudia said, "but I can find out."

Leena had no doubt that Claudia could, if there had been anything to find. There wasn't. Not while neither it nor the Warehouse existed. All that remained was memory and ghosts. Jeannie was both.

"Bet you a month of washing the dishes that I can find something," Claudia said. Both of knew that meant nothing. The B&B had an electric dishwasher.

"If you want to," Leena said.

Claudia spent the day searching and did not find anything.

"It's like it doesn't exist!" she exclaimed over dinner.

"Lie," Steve said absent-mindedly while he reached for the salad. He was sorting the leaves to eat them separately - Leena had no idea why he did that, but he always did -, when his words caught up with him. "It exists whatever it is that looks like it doesn't."

"Steve," Claudia said. "Steve, Steve, Steve! Jinksy! You're a genius!"

"I am?"

"He is?" That was Pete.

"You are," Claudia said, then, more indignantly, to Pete, she added, "he is!"

"Can this wait until after dinner?" Once, just once, Leena would have liked to have a quiet dinner.

"No, because then I'd have to do the dishes."

"We have a dishwasher," Pete said.

"Not the point. Steve, tell me when I'm lying, okay?" Claudia pulled out her notes and started reading them, with Steve occasionally telling her she was lying.

"Okay," she finally said. "I think I have it. I know what's up with Warehouse 11."

Pete and Myka had left already to deal with a ping, so it fell to Leena to ask, "And what is up with Warehouse 11?"

"The Tale of Igor’s Campaign causes Warehouse 11 to appear and disappear. I think it has something to do with the burning of Moscow in 1812." So far, that wasn't anything Leena didn't already know. "There's a pattern to it, I just don't know what it is yet. But! I think I know how to fix it."

"True," Steve said.

"Yes, thank you, Steve. We're going to need a mirror," Claudia said and rattled off a list of other things she would need. That right there would have been the moment Leena would have told her it wouldn't work, but she did want to see what Claudia had come up with and it wouldn't hurt.

Fifteen minutes later, they were in the warehouse with everything on Claudia's list.

"I'll leave you to it," said Steve.

Claudia blocked his way. "Jinksy! Weren't you listening? We need a lie-detector."

"Yeah and you've got Elizabeth Holloway Marston’s watch for that," Steve said.

"Nah, that's for the slingshot effect. You're the lie-detector. Here, hold that." Claudia shoved the polygraph and the mirror at Leena. Leena caught them, but it was a close thing.

It hadn't worked when Leena had tried what Claudia is trying now, but then again, she didn't have a Steve back then. Leena followed Claudia's instructions, except for the part where she had to point out that, no, you cannot use the pompoms in conjunction with the sword like that.

The first thing to come to life after Claudia activates the toaster is the Warehouse 11 door. Jeannie is the next one. "Hey."

"Hey yourself," Leena said, smiling that secret smile she always had for Jeannie.

"Whoa," Steve said. "This is trippy. Who's that and why is she purple?"

"I second these questions," Claudia said.

"You can see me? How's that possible?" Jeannie was extremely excited to finally have someone else to talk to, Leena could tell, and not just from her aura. It had been too long since Jeannie had spoken to anyone but Leena and longer still to anyone but Leena or Mrs Frederick.

"It's a side of effect of the Warehouse truth resonance field," Leena said.

Jeannie blinked. "Oh. It's not permanent, then?"

"Not right now," Claudia said. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Jeannie said and it struck Leena suddenly that what she'd been feeling, wrapped poison green around her heart, was jealousy. Jeannie had been hers alone for so long that she was jealous she could talk to others. That was unfair to Jeannie and the others. She might be a ghost bound to Warehouse 11, but Jeannie was her own person and could talk to whoever she wanted to.

Leena thought red thoughts, tinged with purple, and just like that, jealous green turned to the grey-brown of heartache.

"I'm sure Claudia could make it permanent," Leena said.

Claudia blinked. "Yeah, I could, if we found something to stand in for Steve. Or else Steve could just stand there forever."

"That's a very bad plan!" Steve sounded worried, like he thought Claudia really was going to Bronze him and leave him there forever.

Leena and Claudia rolled their eyes at him in unison.

**Author's Note:**

> [Matthias Ringmann](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Ringmann) was (along with Martin Waldseemüller) the first person to name America on a map.  
> [Baba Deep Sing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Deep_Singh) kept fighting the Mughals after his head was cut off, either partially or entirely, depending on the sources.  
>  The only manuscript of [The Tale of Igor's Campaign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Igor%27s_Campaign) disappeared when 90% of Moscow burned in 1812. According to [the Syfy website](http://www.syfy.com/warehouse13/history/warehouse_11), Warehouse 11 was located in Moscow at the time.  
> [Elizabeth Holloway Marston](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holloway_Marston) was instrumental in the creation of the systolic blood-pressure test that is a precursor to modern polygraphs. She was also an inspiration for the creation of Wonder Woman.  
> The title is from an Emily Dickinson quote: "Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.".


End file.
